


Assuming

by cupcake4mafia



Category: Arashi (Band)
Genre: Apologies, Gen, Outing, coming-of-age schmaltz, ye olde livejournal fics, young!Arashi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-09
Updated: 2015-07-09
Packaged: 2018-04-08 13:33:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4306998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cupcake4mafia/pseuds/cupcake4mafia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jun has someone in his room; Nino demands an investigation. Set in 2002.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Assuming

**Author's Note:**

> First posted on livejournal in 2008.

It was the last night of the first winter concert (Nino remembers, because Aiba woke them up every morning yelling “Join the storm!”), and Jun had someone in his room. Ohno tried to come up with excuses for hanging out in Nino’s room, but it didn’t take long for the other boys to realize that he had been “sexiled.”

“Our little baby!” Nino mourned. 

“To be honest, I’m really surprised,” Sho admitted.

Everyone knew Sho was mostly surprised that it wasn’t him getting laid.

“Did you see the girl?” Aiba asked, jumping on the bed next to Ohno and nearly knocking him off.

“I didn’t see anything,” Ohno answered, frowning deeply. “It’s not our business anyway.”

“Of course it’s our business!” Nino objected. “We’re a team, aren’t we?”

“Well, ask him about it tomorrow then,” Ohno grumbled, slipping into his higher register. “I don’t know anything.”

“He won’t tell us,” Sho said, simply as a matter of fact.

“Jun’s really kind of shy about that stuff, isn’t he?” Aiba agreed, nodding.

That was when Nino had an idea (and Nino was not one to ignore an idea).

“We should let Jun know how proud we are,” he suggested, mouth curling into a devious smile.

Aiba perked up, crawling towards Nino’s spot on the other end of the bed.

“Eh? How?”

“Well,” Nino began, resting his elbows on his knees and pressing the tips of his fingers together in an official manner. “We could all wait outside his room and surprise him.”

Aiba’s eyes widened, both scandalized and amused. Sho cocked his head to the side, grinning. Ohno suddenly sat up straight.

“You can’t do that,” he objected, but his voice quickly lost strength. “Besides, what if you have to wait all night?”

“Jun’s too nice to lock you out all night,” Nino replied, rolling his eyes. “She’s not staying until morning.”

“I have some confetti I stole from backstage!” Aiba announced.

Everyone stared.

“You never know when you’ll need confetti,” Aiba explained.

“Sho,” Ohno continued, ignoring Aiba’s outburst. “You know this isn’t right.”

Nino and Aiba looked between the two, surprised at Ohno’s intensity. It was rare that Ohno invoked their seniority over the group. Nino watched the sudden shift in Sho’s face and knew then that they were definitely going to do it.

“Boys will be boys,” Sho answered in English, smirking. “Come on, Ohno, you’re not really this uptight, are you?”

Aiba and Nino turned to look at Ohno’s confused expression. No, Nino thought, Ohno had no clue that he was one half of a power struggle.

“Let’s go,” Sho said, standing. “I want to wear my cowboy hat for this.”

“Ya-hoo!” Aiba belted, grabbing Sho’s hand and leading him out the door.

“Yee-haw,” Sho corrected under his breath.

Nino looked back at Ohno to find the other boy staring at him, disappointed.

“Don’t do this,” he said.

Nino just smiled and shrugged, because he couldn’t quite get any words to come out. 

The look on Ohno’s face dogged him all down the hallway. It was the same look he’d gotten from the rest of Arashi at one time or another. It seemed he couldn’t entertain anyone without offending someone else.

Soon, Nino and Aiba were crouched opposite Jun’s door with a paper bag of confetti. Sho joined them, hat in hand, looking significantly less excited now that he had won his battle. Nino scooted forward and pressed his ear to the door, earning a giggle from Aiba. He couldn’t hear anything, of course, so he leaned back against the wall with the others.

“Ohno was really mad, huh?” Aiba whispered. “What’s that about?”

“He likes to act like he’s different from us,” Sho muttered in response.

Nino and Aiba’s eyes met, both a little shocked.

“He is different from us,” Nino argued. “You have to admit, we’re being assholes.”

Sho shrugged, but Nino could tell he really wasn’t with them anymore. Aiba looked at the time on his watch. Nino rolled his neck. Jun’s doorknob clicked and Nino grabbed Aiba’s arm to keep him from standing up.

“Peephole!” he mouthed.

The door opened and a boy stepped out. He looked about Sho’s age, with short, spiky hair, and Nino thought he might have seen him carrying boxes earlier that day. Aiba did not throw confetti. Sho did not give out a rebel yell. The boy looked down at them, surprised. He turned back to the room, saying something Nino never caught, and then nearly ran down the hall. Jun stood in the doorway in his pajamas, watching the boy disappear around the corner. Finally, he faced his band mates. He didn’t say anything. He just stared at them for a moment, face red, before turning and slamming the door.

“Oh,” Aiba breathed, breaking the silence.

“Shit,” Sho cursed under his breath, getting up off the floor. “Shit, Nino, what the hell?”

Nino sprang up, shaking with anger and embarrassment.

“Don’t blame this on me!” he snapped, much too loud.

Aiba quickly jumped between them, shushing and grabbing their arms.

“We should have listened to Ohno,” he whispered, mostly to himself.

Of course, Nino had been thinking this since about ten seconds after they parked in front of Jun’s room, but Aiba saying it out loud really drove in the disappointment. Nino hated all this disappointment. He could feel it from Sho and Aiba even as he dug for his room key and opened his door. Why did it all fall on Nino? He didn’t force them to come along.

Ohno looked up from his sketchbook, pencil frozen in the air. Sho, Aiba, and Nino shuffled in, reclaiming their seats. Sho took off his cowboy hat and looked Ohno in the eye.

“You knew.”

Ohno looked back to his drawing.

“It would have been wrong either way,” he mumbled in his quietest of mumbles. “But, yeah, I knew.”

“How?” Aiba asked.

“He told me.”

“Why didn’t he tell us?”

Aiba’s eyes were already wet. Ohno shrugged, obviously uncomfortable. Nino let his hand rest on Aiba’s back without thinking.

“He was planning to,” Ohno finally answered. “He just hadn’t yet. He was afraid.”

Nino cringed. The year before, he had started the “100 Reasons Jun is Gay” list, arbitrarily assigning numbers to Jun’s quirks (usually with no logic - Jun was gay when he wouldn’t let Nino switch seats with him on the bus). He had never really meant it. Jun talked about girls enough.

“I think, in Johnny’s, you eventually stop trying to guess,” Aiba said, slow and thoughtful. “But assuming everyone’s straight doesn’t work out either, does it?”

Nino could almost have smiled at the look on Sho’s face, shocked that Aiba had actually acknowledged what they were talking about.

“I just didn’t think, in our group,” Sho began, trailing off.

Nino hadn’t thought about it either. Jun would always join in with their bitching about how they couldn’t meet any girls, but being surrounded by boys must have been hard for Jun in an entirely different way. Nino couldn’t imagine dealing with liking a guy - even worse, what if he had feelings for someone in the group? Sharing a room with Ohno, watching him undress… Nino stopped himself; he was thinking too much.

“We have to apologize,” Aiba said, interrupting those thoughts. “We have to make it up to him.”

“What do we do?” Nino asked. “Make him a card? ‘Sorry we accidently found out you were gay?’”

“We have to do something! He’s in there right now, worrying about it!” Aiba said, looking as close to angry as he ever could.

“I’ll go talk to him,” Ohno interrupted.

Aiba and Nino whipped around, as though they had forgotten him. Ohno gathered up his sketchbook and magazines and left Nino’s room without another word.

“Do you think-” Sho started.

“No,” Nino finished, shaking his head.

“We can make a cake,” Aiba whispered to himself, proud of the idea.

Sho and Nino stared.

“A gay cake?” Nino asked, incredulous.

Aiba nodded, gazing into the distance, most likely mentally constructing the perfect gay cake. 

After an early-morning visit to the store and a messy adventure in Sho’s hotel room’s kitchenette, Nino learned that a gay cake was chocolate-flavored and had the word “CNOGRADULATION” scribbled on top with pink icing.

“There are so many things wrong with this,” Sho sighed, unwrapping the plastic plates and forks Aiba had insisted he pay for.

“You’re right. We should have bought sprinkles,” Aiba admitted.

Jun received his cake on the desk in his hotel room, where he stared at it for a moment before taking one of the forks and eating a chunk straight out of the pan. Nino, Aiba, and Sho shuffled awkwardly while Jun handed Ohno a fork and gestured towards the cake.

“We’re sorry,” Nino said.

He wasn’t sure what was worse: how much it surprised Aiba and Sho, or the way Jun’s big brown eyes melted for a moment.

“It’s okay, you know. There are a lot of gay idols,” Sho offered.

Jun frowned and put down his fork. Ohno stopped in the middle of a bite.

“I don’t want to be ‘Gay Jun.’ I just want to be Jun. Understand?”

“Of course,” Aiba replied, softly.

“I don’t want the group to be jeopardized because of me.”

There was a long pause before Aiba wailed, “Matsujun!” and rushed around the table to squeeze Jun around the waist. Jun yelped and pushed, but soon enough all of Arashi was locked in a group hug.

“You know,” Nino muttered, face squished in Jun’s hair. “This is #88.”

“You all started it,” Jun protested, blushing while shoving away arms.

“We’re all turning gay, you guys!” Nino whined, stumbling backwards. “I knew this would happen!”

“That guy!” Aiba exclaimed, suddenly. “Was he your boyfriend?”

“No,” Jun answered, frowning.

“Do you have a boyfriend?”

“No.”

“Do you have a crush on anyone?”

“Can’t we all get dressed now?”

“OH MY GOD, WHO IS IT?” Aiba shrieked, excited.

Jun spent the majority of their ride home that day doing whatever he could to get Aiba off this subject, including feigning interest in Aiba’s favorite tokusatsu shows. Nino decided halfway through the journey that Jun’s gay cake might possibly turn Ohno gay if he ate too much of it, but Ohno was not concerned.

All in all, Nino liked going on tour.


End file.
